McBride Smeargate E-mails, Final Nail in the Coffin?

Browsing through the comment sections of various newspapers, the general consensus is that Brown cannot recover from Smeargate. Even if he didn’t know about these particular e-mails, his judgement has to be called into question. It was Gordon Brown who appointed Damian McBride, knowing the way he conducts his work, and it’s Gordon Brown who refused to bow into pressure to ditch McBride last year, instead he moved him from media, to strategy. Keeping him at the heart of number 10.

The damage comes not just from McBride, but from Tony McNulty and Jacqui Smith too, for their part in the expenses row. Despite there being just a year to go before the general election, the government appears to be falling apart, rather than coming together to present a unified vision of the future to the country. Brown has no authority with the public now. It all started when he claimed his decision to not call an election, was nothing to do with the fact he was going to lose it. His attacks on the Conservatives as the ‘do nothing party’ do not wash. His claims that the economic crisis was all to do with America, ignore the domestic mess. His refusal to admit Britain is one of the worst countries in the industrialised world to weather the storm, vastly stretch the realms of imagination.

Where then from here? If the Conservatives are to become elected, it needs to be because they are the best team to run the country, to lift us from this economic disaster. They can’t just win because the opposition collapsed, they need a real mandate to make the tough decisions. David Cameron’s budget response, needs to be a coherent message of change. It needs to lay down the foundations of how a Conservative government would handle the economy if the public put their trust in them.

“Having spent four years shedding the image as the “nasty party”, Mr Cameron is obliged to administer the nastiest economic medicine ever prescribed by any government since the Second World War.” Michael Brown in the Independent.